There is unfortunately, a major flaw in dealing with live animals,
and that is, they are "live", and sometimes, they can "unlive"
themselves. Accidents can happen or Acts of God. Today, we experienced
both the joy of life and the pain of death.
As you know, Vanan and I dabble in jungle corns. Snakes that are
man made hybrids of the california kingsnake and the cornsnake. Both
hardy and wonderful, easy to keep beginner snakes. Well we had a clutch
of these beauties much like last year. Unfortunately, we experienced a
major loss of eggs due to a new incubator and new medium. We're
experiementing with different methods. So, we were pretty down from the
low amount of eggs which survived. Five jungle corn eggs remained from
the original eight.
They pipped this mornin, July 9th. One little bugger looked like he
was ready to come out. So in our excitement we helped him come out of
his egg, after giving him the day to absorb his yolk. He [actually we
don't know the sex] was gorgeous, banded, unlike our blotched jungle
corns of last year, but as he plopped out of his egg into our hands, the
horrible truth came to life.
<img src="http://members.shaw.ca/theherproom/kink.jpg">
What you are seeing is a snake that is literally folded in half. We
were needless to say shocked and extremely saddened by his condition.
He could not unfold himself into a straight line. We laid him into a
container and he writhed about like some sort of Grade B horror flick
monster. Honestly, it was nasty. Poor little guy. We didn't know what
to do, but of course the obvious course was to put him down.
<img src="http://members.shaw.ca/theherproom/kink2.jpg">
You can see how his body actually looped delooped. After we looked
at this poor creatures we decided to cut open the rest of the eggs and
find out if any were like him. The second egg contained another
deformed snake like him.
<img src="http://members.shaw.ca/theherproom/kink3.jpg">
<img src="http://members.shaw.ca/theherproom/kink4.jpg ">
These poor snakes are obviously unable to live. We had to put these
snakes out of their misery. At one point they were both laying in the
tupperware looped delooped one snake's head on the body of the other
unable to move.
Luckily the third snake was perfect and the fourth had only a small
dip in its back. We hope he grows out of it. Needless to say we put
both snakes down and are extremely depressed. So Vanan and I are
sharing a 2L cooler and some ice cream to chill out after these
disturbing events.
The worst part was seeing the two of them looking exactly alike
writhing like earthworms. A snake should never look like that. They had
these beady little black eyes, so trusting, so new to the world and we
had to kill them. Before they got to live, they had to die. There was
simply no way to save these snakes. I choked back the tears as long as
I could, but as we went to the liquor store I couldn't hold back. Vanan
is hanging on stronger than I, but it's so sad and so depressing.
We suspect temperature spikes during incubation caused the bent
backs. As we did observe temperature spikes during incubation.
Anyways, the pain lessens the more you share.
Rest In Peace Jungle #1 and Jungle #2.
~Katt and Vanan
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